Political Quotes

“I came to the floor to express my admiration for the Senator from Arizona. I was listening to his address and I heard my colleague from Tennessee. Senator Kyl's work on nuclear modernization is no surprise to any of us who know him very well because his approach to issues is a principled one, and once he determines the principle, he is dogged. He is a determined person. He basically took this issue of nuclear modernization, which is not on the lips of very many people in the United States--the question of whether our nuclear weapons are safe and reliable, whether they will work--he pulled it out of a trash bin and put it on the front page of a national debate. He did it in connection with the START treaty, but as he said in his own remarks, this should be done whether you are for the START treaty or against the START treaty. It is completely independent, in that sense. In my view, under no circumstances should the START treaty be ratified without doing this. That would be like reducing our weapons and leaving us with a collection of wet matches. We need to make sure what we have left works.”